The UK will be the first to break even with fusion power, leading us towards a future of clean, infinite energy

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The world’s best fusion reactor, situated in the heart of the merry, Hobbit-inspiring motherland of Oxfordshire in England, will soon attempt to become the first fusion power experiment to surpass the mythical “break-even” point. This experiment, known as the Joint European Torus (JET), has held the world record for fusion reactor efficiency since 1997 despite the USA’s recent laser-based fusion experiments at the National Ignition Facility. If JET can reach break-even point, there’s a very good chance that the massive ITER reactor currently being built in France will be able to obtain the holy grail of everlasting green power generation: self-sustaining fusion.

Way back in 1970, the European Community (a precursor to the European Union) decided that fusion power should be taken seriously. In 1977, after lots of planning, construction of the JET began at a former Royal Navy airfield near Culham in Oxfordshire. Rather uniquely for an advanced science experiment, JET was actually finished on schedule in 1983, and was officially opened in 1984 by fair old Blighty’s Supreme Leader Queen Elizabeth II. In 1997, 16 megawatts of fusion power was produced from an input power of 24 megawatts, for a fusion energy gain factor (usually expressed by the symbol Q) of around 0.7. No other fusion reactor, including the National Ignition Facility in California, has come close. (The NIF is hampered by the fact that its its ignition method — 500 terrawatts of laser power — is incredibly inefficient.)

The fusion chamber at the National Ignition Facility in California. Fusion reactors look pretty awesome, eh?

While JET itself is a fairly low-power experiment (38 megawatts), it’s still very exciting because it’s essentially a small-scale prototype of the massive (500 megawatts) ITER fusion reactor being built in France that will (hopefully) fuse deuterium-tritium (D-T) fuel by 2027. Over the last few years, JET has been upgraded with the ITER-Like Wall (yes, that’s its scientific name) — basically a wall of solid beryllium that can withstand being bombarded by ultra-high-energy neutrons and temperatures in excess of 200 million degrees.

Another fusion chamber, this time the NSTX at Princeton. Click to zoom in.

With this new wall in place, the scientists at JET think they’re ready to throw some D-T fuel into the tokamak, pump up the magnetic field, and pray that more energy is released from the fuel than was put in to start the reaction. The key to sustained fusion is keeping the plasma hot and focused — and a big part of that is using a wall that bounces the hot neutrons back into the reaction, rather than letting them escape and thus losing energy and heat to the environment.

After years of working with just deuterium, JET is now ready to use a deuterium-tritium fuel mix that will burn a lot hotter and have a better chance of reaching break-even. When ITER comes online in the 2020s, it will use a D-T fuel mix. Speaking to the BBC, JET director Steve Cowley said, “We hope in the next runs of Jet that we’ll approach a [fusion energy gain] of one.” (Q = 1). For self-sustaining fusion that can be harnessed for energy production, though, we need to reach a Q of 20 or more — we need a confinement method (magnets, walls) that is so good that very little external energy is required to keep the fusion reaction going. ITER is aiming for a Q of 5 or 10 — and if it proves to be successful, say in 2030 or so, then maybe we’ll finally be ready to produce a real fusion power plant.

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J. J. Abrams should use those in the new Star Wars movies. And the blue one looks like a Daft Punk video.

massau

just to say it i wouldn’t call it infinitive energy, ok we have a lot of hydrogen but we also need water for ourself. so it a bit like a dillema do you want water or energy.

Marc Guillot

Obviously we can’t call it infinite, but at all effects it is as if it was infinite.

A fusion reactor can give us energy to power a city for a year, only from a glass of water. How many glasses of water can we extract from our oceans ?. Certainly our oceans have enough water for our needs and for feed fusion reactors for millions of years. And if we ever manage to dry them, we can get even bigger amounts of water from the jovian moons, etc. …

It’s not like we will be able to live on Earth forever. In several hundreds million years (less than a billion years) Earth will be out of the Goldilocks zone, so our water only has to last us until them. At that moment we better have found a way to reach other stellar systems.

Sam Cerulean

Do you think Fusion propulsion could get to near light speed?

Marc Guillot

Yes, I believe that fusion will impulse ships around 10% of c in a not so far future. So we can jump from star to star (around 5 light years jumps).

No, anti-matter tech would be required for that. Fusion is more efficient than fission, but still nowhere near the 100% efficiency of matter – antimatter annihilation. Star Trek Enterprise would require ten times its wait to be propelled by fusion.

Marc Guillot

We don’t need warp drives to reach other stellar systems, a fraction of c would be enough.

Black Hola

Theoretically you could just travel at walking speed. It would take millions of years though.

Sam Cerulean

I saw a discussion online about how we could travel to any location instantaneously if we could break the speed of light because solid matter information travels at the speed of light so if you move faster than that, that’s when that object would convert into a quantum superposition.

One way to achieve this hypothetically would to turn off the higgs field in that region in order to stop matter being applied to the object travelling really fast.

stefan

You may travel ~instantly as far as you want with sub-light-speed. Once you get to 99.(9)% of speed of light you may travel 10 billions light-years away in nanosecond of your local time. Problem is you will have no home to return; upon you return Sun would be a white dwarf.

Sam Cerulean

See that implies that local time is not relative to the time of everywhere else.

stefan

There is no an universal “everywhere else” time. “everywhere else” is always a local time of particular observer.

several hundreds million years damn thats a long time i guess we could control our own sun by then or just extract the energy of it. if we don’t blow ourself up. Maybe we could just upload our selfs in robot probes and recreate and adapt ourself to new planets.

Marc Guillot

Yes, it’s a long time, but only around the same time that lifeforms like the trilobites dominated Earth, so we already are past halftime of superior life on Earth.

It’s a little sad when you see it this way.

dc

I’m pretty sure the species will be extinct by then…. or in a best case scenario so evolved as to be a new species.

Marc Guillot

Well, that’s for sure if humankind extincts itself (we are the only ones that can do that). If not, I wouldn’t expect much evolution.

Once reached civilization we can’t further evolutionate (is this word correct ?). We don’t have external pressure neither survival of the fittest (our society ensures that even the weakest survive).

Matt Menezes

Yeah, but we’re on the verge of taking over evolution by manipulating our own genes. We’ll soon accelerate evolution, which is good because we’ve actually slightly devolved recently due to no selection pressure.

Marc Guillot

Agreed, I’m not so sure I would still call it Evolution, but I agree on everything.

dc

Even if we don’t evolve ourselves, there is no reason to believe that the process of evolution has stopped. Humans still mutate. Humans today look very different from the ones 100,000 years ago. If you found yourself 100,000 years in the past, you would look like a genetic freak. Multiply that out to a billion years, and well you get the point.

dc

We can go extinct without doing it ourselves. We won’t get eaten, but the earth could be hit by asteroid or big comet. Or something really bad and geological could happen. Or the sun could do something bad. Or there could be super nova nearby which points toward us. And there are always aliens, zombies and life ending viruses.

Marc Guillot

Sorry, but yes, Human Evolution stopped when we reached civilization (which we didn’t reach 100.000 years ago, but only 5.000 years ago).

Not only we don’t evolve anymore, but quite the contrary, as Matt has said, we de-evolve. As you say, we still have mutations, but you fail to notice that the vast majority of casual mutations are unfavorable, causing genetic diseases and weaknesses. Under Evolution, the media pressure kills the weakest and only the very few favorable mutations survive to be passed to the genoma of future generations.

But on a civilized society we ensure that everyone, the weakest included, survive and have an equal opportunity to leave their weaker genoma to the future generations (overwhelming the very few favorable mutations).

Luckily, as Matt has also said, we are almost able to manipulate our own genoma, and remove those illnesses and weaknesses, artificially improving our genoma (Gattaca movie style). This is not Natural Evolution, but certainly will change us.

Marc Guillot

If you really fear those apocalyptic scenarios, sleep well because there only is a snowball chance on hell of that.

Asteroids or comets ?, they already hit us (a couple of years ago we saw one falling in Russia), they can obliterate a city, but not extinguish humankind. Even the huge impact that extinguished dinausars, two hundred millions years ago, can’t extinguish us (the worst for the billions of survivors will be the posterior nuclear winter, but anyway hundreds of millions of humans will still survive). Nothing short of the planets collision that created our Moon can extinguish us, and we know for certain that the Solar System orbits are stable for billions of years at least.

A nearby supernova wiping us ?, don’t fear it, this have been studied and none of the stars near enough to have this impact is in danger to reach supernova state for the next billions of years.

Our Sun doing something bad ?, sure, in several hundreds millions of years its heat and brightness won’t allow superior life on Earth. But until then, no, it can’t do anything to extinguish the entire humankind.

Yes we can be invaded by aliens, transformers, zombies, vampires and werewolves. An horde of angels can bring us Doomsday. The entire Universe can unexpectedly disappear in a blip … But, don’t waste your time waiting for it.

Dean Maher

I love your comments, they intrigue me greatly. You’re a very knowledgeable person and I’d like to ask for your opinion on world dominance by elite class, and I’m not meaning ‘Illuminati’ but call it what you will. The world’s leaders of today are an issue to the human race and many people are ignorant towards it. I’d just like to know your view on this issue as your very intellectual and it’s hard to find people with that property nowadays.

Marc Guillot

Thanks a lot for your kind words.

You are absolutely right. The massive concentration of wealth in very few hands is probably the biggest issue humankind should face, and as you say, nobody talks about it. A fair distribution of wealth would solve the most important problems we have.

Can you believe that just the 85 richest persons accumulates the same wealth than half the population of Earth ?. It’s mind-blowing, 85 persons having the same wealth of 3.500.000.000 persons.

Not only that, but the most incredible is that the gap between that rich elite and the common people keeps increasing year after year.

I’m very pessimistic :-(. In countries like mine (Spain) we don’t have real democracy, but a partitocracy, where political parties only legislate in favor of banks and grand fortunes. There is no separation of powers in Spain (and in many many countries), this partitocracy sold to the financial elites has tight control over the executive, legislative and judicial power. They have built a system where is extremely difficult the participation of outsiders who can thread their perfect system.

I fear that nothing short of a violent revolution of the people of Spain can change the electoral law, judiciary system, … in order to build a fair system legislating for all the persons having equal opportunities instead of the richest getting richer and the poorest getting poorer, as is actually happening.

I’m very sorry for being so pessimistic, but the reality of countries like Spain is so hopeless and futureless that makes it difficult to be optimistic. Sadly the rest of the world doesn’t looks much better, I can’t see any mid-term future where the few richest doesn’t get richer and we all get poorer.

RBH

Or watch Idiocracy (only the first few minutes if you’re pressed for time) for an alternative take on what evolution might mean for humanity.

havor

– It’s not like we will be able to live on Earth forever. In several hundreds million years –

You have more fate in humanity then me, i think we will self destruct long before that.

Ray C

I was thinking the same thing. It will probably produce energy for a looooooooong time, but not be infinitely self-sustaining, but I see what they’re saying.

dc

It’s as infinite as the universe allows. Ultimately the universal clock will die down. Is it sad? Well it is what it is. Anyway the human race won’t be around to see it, so why worry?

dc

It’s as close to infinite as the universe allows. Hydrogen is the most common element in the known universe by a factor of about 12 (over helium). It is over 10,000 times more common than known carbon deposits, and 40,000 times more common than silicon. It is also common on the moon, potentially opening up lunar hydrogen mining, although lunar mining will probably used either on the moon or for space travel.

massau

yes i know that hydrogen is really conmen i also know that you could fuse heavier elements together but it is less efficient and harder to do up till iron to create energy.
But i meant that earth hasn’t got an infinitive amount of water, hydrogen to fuse. we won’t use it all up in my lifetime but maybe in the far future we will have fused a lot of water.

dc

We have a whole solar system with lots of hydrogen. I wouldn’t worry about it. Not to mention Helium 3 which is another power element, found on the moon and other places. And of course, we are making progress with solar energy which can reduce the amount of hydrogen we need to fuse.

Joakim

“Another fusion chamber, this time the NSTX at Princeton. Click to zoom in.”
That image is inverted, it should be corrected.

http://www.korioi.net/ Korios

I highly doubt hot fusion will ever reach significant (at least +10%) energy gains. The researchers themselves desire to maintain the whole tech at an R&D stage, because commercial deployment would clearly mean transfer of most of the funds from research to the fusion plants. ITER will most likely prove to be the most wasteful, meaningless slaughter of tax payer money in the history of mankind.

dc

It’s possible. Sometimes these research programs do become big government jobs programs. Hopefully though something will come of it. Maybe DARPA will take over the science in the USA. It actually builds what it researches.

Marc Guillot

Don’t you think that those projects will have to offer some results if they ever expect further funds ?.

Matt Menezes

Yeah, some people hate on academia so much. Like profs who work their whole lives on a field would just want to waste their talent on something.

dc

Then they go on to the new research scam, like stem cell research, or the human genome project.

Marc Guillot

Steam Cell research and genoma project are scam ?, I guess we never should have descended from the trees, don’t you think ?.

I see where you’re coming from, but don’t you think that a single team that made a huge breakthrough wouldn’t want to go public for all the glory and spoils it would entail? Think about how much money your group would be able to get if you could, say, triple the efficiency in 10 years or produce plans for a viable reactor. Then, other research groups would have to up their game. Researchers have to compete for grants, this competition strives to ensure the best get the funding (it doesn’t always pan out that way, but it tries to).

iron_dinges

Have you heard of the US military?

eonvee375

So UK does it again huh? Starting revolutions and stuff ^^

Rentier

How much water will be needed to supply the world population with fusion power?

Pickee

What difference does it make? If fusion power works, the world’s water shortage is over. Desalination will become economically viable the world over.

Scarla

So if it’s a multinational effort, how is it that “the UK will be the first to break even with fusion power”? Uh?
Your title is seriously misleading.

Scott Jackson

Sebastian is from the UK. He wants his country to get all the credit.

Marc Guillot

The reactor happens to be in the UK, is logical that the britts take some credit.

Scarla

Yeah, just “happens” to be there. Now, does that mean that the UK was the only nation to contribute to this project? I don’t think so. So why is it that UK takes all the credit? Despicable bias.

Phobos

I kind of liked the idea Bill Gates and Toshiba had about creating like a nuclear battery to power up homes.

Scott

Sebastian, we must read a lot of the same websites. I saw this same graphic not two hours ago on TED, chuckles. Probably why I like this website so much, we both find the same sorts of things newsworthy. Great article.

georose

It appears that the picture at the top is a graphic. Regardless, the maintenance would be horrendous just looking at “it”. It would have to be a hell of a lot better than break even!

Maybe, but what’s better than having several competing alternatives ?.

My vote is for the tokamaks reactors (like this one), they are the more mature (and impressive). :-)

Helios

The problem with tokamak reaktor is that the have to be powerd down after a certain amount of time to recharge the center coil whitch creates the balancing magnetic field that keeps the plasma in place. So you should put your bets on the Stellarator design instead.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellarator

Barney Holmes

Remember being inspired as a kid ~1980 by a photo of this in an encylopedia. However, IMO the fusion guys have given the impression that this is a “green” technology. Its not – “http://djbarney.org/Breakthru Technologies.html#What” … there’s the same problem with radiation and radioactive waste.

Marc Guillot

Sorry, your link is broken, I couldn’t read it.

The radiation problem it really isn’t a problem because there is no chance of contamination (like Chernobyl of Fukushima). It’s so incredibly difficult to maintain fusion, that if anything goes wrong, the reaction just can’t continue and automatically stops.

The radioactive waste of fusion is only formed of very short-lived radioactive waste. It shouldn’t be a problem to manage.

aufdenschlips

strange, that suddenly they are making that much progress

why, oh why

maybe, someone seems to be on the path to achieve the same thing with a much cheaper design

ps:

not you, italian fraud master

convolution

I don’t get it. So initially, fuel is added in to start up the fusion… and after that… do we need more fuel? Would it actually power itself and keep on producing energy infinitely?

Helios

There is no sutch thing as a perpetuum mobile, so ofcourse you need a external fuel source. “Traditional” fusion reactors work with work with hydrogen isotopes normaly deuterium and tritium (hydrogen with one or two additional neutrons) which then get combined into helium and thus relesing energy from mass defect I´m not goin into that to deep here, for further information consult google or wikipedia but essentially after some time you have to pump some new hydrogen in and get the helium out, in that sense its basically like burnig fossil fule and releasing CO2. The thing is that hydrogen can be found in a abundance on this planet and then be turned in said isotopes ideally by the reactor itself. Now what makes fusion so interesting is that it requires very little fule to get alot of energy out of it (in case we ever get it to work perfectly), BUT it is not waste free as alot of people suggest, the fusion of these elements releases alot of high energy neutrons whicht turn everything they come in contact with into radioactive materials and damage the structure of the walls of the reactor so they have to be replaced after a amount of time and then stored like other radioactive waste (just not as long as uranium or plutonium that is used in nuclear reactors).
Hope that helps, have a nice day.

Donk970

I’ve always thought these big hammer fusion projects are cool and I’m sure they yield loads of great data but hot fusion will never yield any practical amount of energy.

http://www3.sympatico.ca/n.rieck/ neil from canada

There are two basic flavors of fusion: “inertial confinement” and “magnetic confinement”. From an engineering perspective, “inertial” should be easier to do than “magnetic”. On 2014-02-14, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced “break-even” for their “inertial” approach. Just search for “Laser-sparked fusion power passes key milestone” at NewScientist magazine.

Neowolf

They did not achieve breakeven. What they achieved was fusion yield > than the very small fraction of the drive energy that was deposited in the core of the imploded fuel. As a fraction of laser energy, the yield was still something less than 1% (and as a fraction of electrical energy used to drive the lasers, maybe 0.01%.)

Allan Theobald

Yes this is the future but not for many years because it’s too expensive. The real revolution in fracking is well underway in the US and elsewhere(but not Europe).

Donald Jasby

Solar fusion and manmade fusion are different animals.

Solar fusion uses the proton-proton reaction and produces harmless deuterium (and energy that emerges from the sun mainly as electromagnetic including visible light).

Manmade fusion uses the deuterium-tritium reaction and produces mainly high-energy neutrons. These neutrons gradually destroy the reacting fuel containment structure while creating masses of radioactive material. Replenishing the burned and unrecovered tritium (not found in nature) is a speculative matter.

If you really want fusion-based electricity, go to the nearest Home Depot and pay $500 for solar panels and an inverter that you can set up in your backyard. That’s as close as anybody will ever come.

Neowolf

From what we’ve seen with fusion reactors built so far, and from studies like ARIES on fusion reactor engineering, tokamak-based reactors have little if any chance of ever being cost competitive. Yes, deuterium and lithium can be obtained in large quantities, but the reactors themselves are too expensive.

Fusion power solves the non-problem of fuel availability, but makes the real problem of nuclear energy, capital cost, much much worse. The entire approach is penny wise, pound foolish. And this is assuming the reactors can even be made to work, and work reliably, which is a tall order. ITER will be lucky to reach its design lifetime limit without major damage from a plasma disruption, damage that would be almost impossible to fix given the reactor structure will quickly become too radioactive for hands-on maintenance.

https://ortexgraves.com O.R. TEX GRAVES

My question is, “Why aren’t the big, main stream environmental groups preaching fusion like it was the second coming of the Lord? I am passionate about fusion energy. It could do so much and we are so close. It is obvious that if the environment is going to get cleaned up and for society to continue to evolve, that a huge amount of energy will be needed to replace the dirty energy generating plants that we have today. Fusion energy could do it.
ortecgraves.com

Sean Watts

News update: NIF did it…in small but spectacular fashion.

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